The Grief Box for Carers Workshop Series - Session 2: Losing Them, Finding Them

The Grief Box for Carers series of six, two-and-a-half-hour workshops presented over six months by The Grief Centre of Western Australia and supported by MIFWA.  It will introduce carers to the concepts of loss and grief, emotional intelligence, awareness of self and others and much more. The workshops are designed to deliver the tools to engage the carer's resilience and self-management skills to enable a compassionate response to grief for self and others.  

A rich conversational styled interactive workshop series, each session will add a layer of understanding, building the picture of resilience for people who are in a caring role and affected by grief and loss, particularly ambiguous loss, which often goes unrecognised.  Each workshop is facilitated by a carer peer and is delivered from through the lens of lived experience.

We understand the carer’s journey and how isolating and impactful it can be on the wellbeing of the carer. Too often grief and loss is not a topic for discussion and consequently, unattended grief causes a range of unhelpful coping strategies. This workshop series is designed to build hope and be transformational in its outcomes.

The Grief Box for Carers is specifically tailored to the caring community, and those who serve this community, so carer peer workers and other supporters are welcome to participate.

Training and Key Objectives:

• To open key conversations about grief and loss
• To create understanding of personal and community resilience after loss
• To better understand the impacts of caring on the carer
• To identify and better understand and manage relationship dynamics in caring
• To promote hope and build resilience in the caring community
• To better understand how to advocate for self and others
• To learn strategies for self-management and self-care
• To recognise the rewards and compensations of caring

Session 2: Losing Them, Finding Them - 19 March 2024 | 9:30am-12:30pm

Many carers struggle with the change in relationship dynamics following the incapacitation or reduced capacity of the person for whom they are caring.

Where previously a partner may have played a very practical role in the relationship, they may now not be able to complete practical tasks. This causes an ambiguous loss in the relationship and there is a grief associated.

Further, wellness can fluctuate. Where lack of function may be extreme at one time, it may be less extreme at another. How does the carer manage these dynamic changes in power in the relationship?

This session will explore the dynamics of relationships, ambiguous loss due to changes in capacity and separating the person from the illness or physical, psychological or emotional limitation. It will help the carer to expand their awareness of others and increase their emotional intelligence, increasing their capacity to cope and hold hope.

Who should register?

1. Carers/family/supporters/kin of someone living with a life-impacting condition (physical or mental health related)
2. People who support carers who want to be able to better support them

About the Facilitator

Hayley Solich is a carer with experience delivering carer engagement training into 15 public mental health facilities in Western Australia. She is the past Carer Co-Chair of the National Mental Health Consumer & Carer Forum, and a mutli-award winning community engagement specialist and educator.

Hayley is no stranger to grief and loss, having lived through the tragic loss of a parent to road trauma in her early 20s, the same year that her two grandmothers passed away. She has now also survived the death of a child through miscarriage, her mother-in-law’s death to brain cancer, a friend’s suicide and her father and father-in-law’s passing.

“Not all loss relates to death. I first recognised that I was experiencing ambiguous loss when I sat in a carer’s group and the person next to me started speaking about their feelings in relation to their partner’s incapacitation due to a brain injury. I started to cry because I realised that my loss was the same. My partner was incapacitated due to physical and mental health conditions, and I was also sad that he could no longer do the things he used to do.  Knowing someone else was experiencing the same sadness as I was felt validating,” says Hayley.

“This started a journey of healing for me because when you know what you are feeling and you can put words to it, you are then empowered to address your pain.”

Hayley joined The Grief Centre of Western Australia team in 2021 as a volunteer, chairing the Management Committee, and is now working as the Business Development Manager and an Educator.